Being overweight is a complex issue with underlying reasons that involve much more than our physical body, burning calories, exercising or positive thinking.
This is the main reason why diets do not work in the long term. Diets are standard protocols that we create or follow. It has been demonstrated that people who diet are more prompt to put weight in the medium and long term; very often it become and addictive pattern, overweight and obese people usually try one after another diet during their lives, feeling bad about themselves when noticing that after they stop the diet, their bodies recover again the lost weigh very often adding some extra.
Diets do not work in a sustainable way and instead they trigger different hormones, sleeping unbalances, anxiety and permanent hunger for the body no getting the needed nutrition. Working with will power to control eating, triggers craving symptoms and makes us eat without having the consciousness to choose (out of desperation basically). When this happens, we not only put more weight but also feel more stress, and our self-esteem tend to diminish as we so incline and trained to blame ourselves for the results.
Through my own personal experience of being overweight, and seeing clients struggling with obesity and weight issues, I am very aware that the reason to be overweight is not that we are lazy or lack of discipline or will power. I have known persons going on diets with lots of restriction and self-control, exercising hard and with consistency and suffering the yoyo dieting effects with no permanent results. So..... there are more much more elements playing in the body.
Factors like poor self-Image, Emotional baggage and traumas play an important role in keeping a healthy body weight.
Some important factors that contribute to being overweight are :
1. Digestive/Metabolic Problems: Gut issues, Leaking gut, lack of friendly bacteria in the body. When the guts are not healthy and balanced enough, processing the food as well as detoxifying become less efficient.
2. Respiratory Apnoea: It affects your sleeping patterns and therefore the function of hormones and metabolism.
3. Emotional Stress: This affects not only our metabolism but also our behaviour around food. Food very often is linked to pleasure and comfort. IN trying to compensate emotional stress very often we overeat.
4 . Psychological traumas, mental stress: In search for feelings of safety, belonging which have been stolen from our lives from past traumatic events, we recur to food to cover up.
5. Sleeping problems: Insomnia, Sometimes related to Apnoea, not always. Insomnia alters our main metabolic hormone which is the insulin causing unbalance in our hunger trigger mechanisms.
6. Inflammation: Which is specially due to food and environmental toxins. Being the physical body very intelligent, it creates the mechanism of fat as an option to store toxins in the body, and in that way the these are not spread through the whole system.
We have been trained to blame ourselves when diets do not work and that is not the case. It is not because we are not diligent, it is because diets do not work in the long run. I don't think that people are overweight because they do not have will power, they are lazy or they are irresponsible. I know people who have struggled with overweight for long periods of time, they have tried many different ways with diligence and they are disciplined. The issues around overweight are much more complex that calories in /calories out or exercising. I used to exercise intensily but after the trainings I crave for extra calories and richer food.
It ws as if my body wanted to be fat. Some thing in my mind was sending the body a message that it was safer / better to be fat. But I did not know.
It was through 2 very important realisations that I understood
understanding that diets are standard protocols and nobody is standard, therefore they do not work in the long run and also that our thoughts, beliefs and emotions have a big influence in how the body physiology and hormones operate
until I realised that to find your ideal, perfect weight you need to go to the real roots of your unbalanced body weight I could address my reasons and in my particular case was the need to find a spiritual path that really could full fill my soul's needs which were not filled by family religion or any religion for that matter. Finding a spiritual opportunity, gave me enough ground to love myself, to find purpose, to appreciate my role in the world. I was longing for that belonging sense.
I consider when we find that thing that is in the core of overweight which is different for everyone, the opportunities and we can access the information to address this issue easily.
Being overweight is a complex issue with underlying reasons that involve much more than our physical body, burning calories, exercising or positive thinking.
This is the main reason why diets do not work in the long term.
What are diets? Diets are standard protocols that we create or follow in order to lose weight.
It has been demonstrated that people who diet are more prompt to put weight in the medium and long term; very often it become an addictive pattern: overweigh and obese people usually try one after another diet during their lives, feeling bad about themselves when noticing that after they stop the diet, their bodies recover again the lost weigh very often adding some extra.
I want to make it clear that when you diet and put on weight strait away and you have done it many times in your life, when it happens I want you to know that it is not your fault. It is beacsue diets do not touch the root cause of overweight
Reasons why diets do not work in a sustainable way:
1. They trigger stress hormones. Why? when we diet and deprive ourselves extremely of food, we are sending a message to the body that there is not enough available food. It's an ancestral response, to the fact that we are not safe. The main hormone that is realised when dieting is cortisol, when we release cortisol the fat burning mechanism in the body is less efficient what means that we are more efficient in processes of storing fat. Ancestraly when there is not food available, the body comes into a estate of storing because there is not safety and we do not know ehne we will have available again. This is called we enter a Famine state, which is almost an hibernation state. Cortisol release is a survival mechanism. Thiroids slows down.
2. They trigger sleeping unbalances because of the cortisol that is released in the body which is the stress hormone, we produce more adrenalin and it makes us feel more awake even at night. Cortisol also activates inflammation in the body which activates the fat storing process.
3. There is an insuline unbalance. The insuline is the hormone that keeps the glucose in your blood within a normal range. It does this by taking glucose out of your bloodstream and moving it into cells throughout your body. The cells then use the glucose for energy and store the excess in your liver, muscles. When there is insuline unbalance, there is more fat storing in the body. Hyperinsulemia. This creates cravings fro high caloric food, comforting food, fast release food or food with Highh GI. junk food: there is not such a thing, it is junk or it is food: its toxic to the liver and depletes inmunity.
4. Due to this, this body is in permanent state of craving. Why? if there is insuline in the blood stream permanently it is as if asking the body for food to work on all the time. But also if the dietsa re to restrictive, the body becomes lack of certain nutrients specially minerals, aa and vitamins, when the body is undernourished the body feel hungry, Nutritional starvation.
5. Lack of self-esteem: when we diet on/of wjat is called yo/yo dieting the self esteem is depleted since we usually blame ourselves for the lack of consistence. When our sense of self esteem and self love is depleted it makes the process of losing weight more challenging.
6. They are based on willpower and self control and these strategies are not sustainable in the long run. Log power is comparable with a ball in the water. when you are holding it from the surface it stays under the water, if you release it comes back to the surface. The best way to manage our body weight is trough real understanding of how your body works.
sleeping unbalances, anxiety and permanent hunger for no getting the needed nutrition. When this happens we not only put more weight but also feel more stress, and our self-esteem tend to diminish as we so incline and trained to blame ourselves for the results.
Through my own personal experience of being overweight, and seeing clients struggling with obesity and weight issues, I am very aware that the reason to be overweight is not that we are lazy or lack of discipline and control of our habits. I have known persons going on diets with lots of restriction and self-control, exercising hard and with consistency and suffering the yoyo dieting effects with no permanent results. So..... there are more much more elements playing in the body.
Factors like poor self-Image, Emotional baggage, traumas play an important role in keeping a healthy body weight, but this is neither the only factor.
There is need of a holistic approach conducive to balance our body weight, an approach where we take the power and pride of our uniqueness. An approach where the physiological, the physical and the emotional aspects are considered and understood.
Losing weight can become a great opportunity, a path way to learn from our body and mind, a way to start or recover a positive self-image and a positive relationship with thyself, making peace with food, making peace with our bones and flesh, finding the harmony that is inside this precious gift that is having a physical expression.
Commentaires